


Picture Perfect Christmas

by goodboylupin (somebetterwords)



Series: A String of Christmas Lights [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Harry, Boyfriends, Christmas, Cliche, Fluff, Found Family, Holidays, Humor, Kid Fic, M/M, Mall Santa Claus, Photographs, Santa's Elves, Santa's Workshop, Shopping, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin Raise Harry Potter, Sunglasses, polaroids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebetterwords/pseuds/goodboylupin
Summary: Remus and Sirius take Harry to get a picture with Santa and so help him Merlin, Remus isgoingto get a picture with Santa.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: A String of Christmas Lights [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047778
Comments: 3
Kudos: 108
Collections: kagsivity's fic archive





	Picture Perfect Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> For pixelated's Holiday Prompt List
> 
> Beta'd by [Sarah!](https://starstruck4moony.tumblr.com/)

“This whole thing is ridiculous,” Sirius complained, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’re really _paying_ to have our baby sit in that costumed stranger’s lap while some bizarre Muggle creation they’re calling an elf takes a photo to commemorate the occasion?”

“That’s the long and short of it, yes.”

Sirius glanced at the teenager dressed in red and white striped leggings, a green felt smock, and a red hat with a large bell at the end, wrangling the crowds behind them into a neat and orderly queue. “Name one species of elf that looks even remotely like that, Remus, name _one_. That jangly hat looks more like something _Peeves_ would wear! I don’t see why we have to do this.”

“Because,” Remus answered. “Lily probably did this herself as a girl. We have the knowledge, resources, and abilities to pass on so many of James’s childhood traditions. Don’t you think she would have liked for us to pass on some of _hers_?”

Normally, invoking their dead best friends’ names was an incredibly potent argument. It spoke to how very bad Sirius Black was at standing still in a slow-moving queue that the words did not soften him. He simply exhaled harshly disturbing a tress of hair hanging artfully over his forehead. “ _Probably_ , Remus. She _probably_ did this, and she _might_ have wanted Harry to do it too. We have plausible deniability!”

Remus clenched the handlebars of Harry’s pram. “You’re worse than the actual children waiting right here with us, you know that?”

“At least _I_ haven’t started any staring matches with the people standing behind me in line, unlike _some_ little girls with uneven plaits whose mothers ought to teach them to mind their own business,” Sirius retorted, loudly.

The woman in front of them shot a glare over her shoulder but yanked on her daughter’s hand until the child redirected her gaze forward.

Remus rubbed his palm down hard over his face. “All right, fine,” he decided, stepping around the pram to crouch in front of Harry, who was easily occupied rolling his red miniature racing car back and forth on the tray in front of him. “Change of plans, little bud!” Remus informed the both of them as he went about unbuckling the lad and lifting him out. “You and your godfather are going to do a little window shopping while I stand in line _all by myself_ , and then you can come back when I’m in front and sit on Santa’s lap for a photo! Won’t that be nice for you and Padfoot?”

Harry was too young to grasp sarcasm and passive-aggressiveness, only picking up on Remus’s cheerful tone. “So nice!” He agreed, clapping his hands together.

“Thank you, Moony,” Sirius breathed as he took Harry and settled him on his hip. He ducked down to plant a kiss on Remus’s cheek, which Remus deftly dodged, both because he was still angry and because they were in a Muggle shopping centre. “I’ll make it up to you,” Sirius promised.

“You’d better,” Remus grumbled. He kissed the top of Harry’s head and gave Sirius a light push to send him on his way. “And you have to come _back_.”

Sirius scoffed as he stepped over the velvet rope cordoning off the queue to Santa’s Grotto. “Of course we’ll come back!”

❅~❅~❅

“They’re not coming back, are they?” Remus wondered aloud. There were only two families ahead of him in the queue, and as the baby in front looked fast asleep, head pillowed on her Mum’s shoulder while the woman rocked gently side to side, he suspected that would be a very quick visit with St. Nick to take a picture of her asleep in his arms.

“It doesn’t look likely,” the helper elf at the front answered his rhetorical question, handing him a candy cane as if in consolation.

Remus unwrapped the straight end of the candy cane and sucked on it. He leaned heavily on the handlebars of the pram and considered his options.

Really, there was only one. He hadn’t spent an hour and fifteen minutes on his feet, most of it alone, not to get a damn picture with the man in red.

“Hullo, Santa,” Remus greeted calmly, shaking the man’s hand when at last his turn came. He perched himself delicately on Santa’s knee, careful not to bear his full weight on the man’s leg. “Remus Lupin, longtime fan. _Long time_ , I realize I’m four times the age of your average visitor.”

“Ho ho ho!” The Santa bellowed, he let out a laugh that made his belly jiggle like the bowl full of jelly from the stories. They’d picked a very good Grotto to visit, it seemed, if their Santa actor didn’t even need to use padding to achieve the look. “Hello, Remus Lupin! Santa loves all his children just the same, big and small, don’t you worry! Now, what would you like for Christmas, young man?”

“Huh. You know, my bo—my best friend, Sirius, is _incredibly_ generous, and a bit of a shopaholic. It tends to be that I’ll point out something I like, or more often he sees something he correctly believes I would like, and he just marches right into the shop and buys it for me. I never have anything specific I can save up to request for birthdays or holidays.”

“Well, how about an experience to share, then!” Santa suggested. “For her last birthday, I took Mrs. Claus to see the South Pole. Did you know the elves there wear red smocks with green hats? Absolutely fascinating! And we had such good fun with the penguins.”

Remus tapped his candy cane against his lip as he thought about it. “You know, that sounds nice in theory, but the experience I wanted today was taking Harry—our ward, that’s a bit of a long story—for his first picture with you, and that’s not really turned out very well.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Santa said, and he pointed to where a very tall man carried a very small boy and barrelled up the queue.

“We’re here!” Sirius shouted as he came to a stop before them. He placed Harry down on the ground and bent to grab his own thighs as he panted. “Sorry for the tardiness, Moony. I saw the coolest baby sunglasses for Harry and then I had to find adult pairs for us to match and then this very hostile father at the back called me a skipper and tried to _physically_ block me and—”

Sirius suddenly straightened and squinted at the scene before him. “Why are you sitting in another man’s lap?” He demanded lowly.

Remus rolled his eyes. “He’s not another man, he’s _Santa_. And someone had to!”

“Well,” Sirius picked Remus up by the waist and set him down on the ground beside him. He then picked Harry—who was wearing a tiny pair of reflective-lensed aviators—up and plopped him down where Remus had sat. “Harry’s here now, so there’s no more need for that.”

“Hi!” Harry chirped to the rosy-cheeked, smiling old man.

“Ho ho ho!” Santa bellowed and laughed once more. “Hello, young Harry! Do you know who I am?”

“Father Christmas!”

“Indeed, indeed!” Santa gave Harry’s stomach a light tickle. “And do you know what you’d like me to get you for Christmas?”

“New boom!” Harry said. “Go _fast_! And this up!” He stretched his hand up as far he could over his head.

Santa shot a questioning glance at Remus who nodded encouragingly and shot a double thumbs up.

“Well, Harry, I’ve checked my list and you’ve been a _very_ good boy this year! If you keep it up, I think you’ll be very pleased with what you find under your tree come Christmas morning.”

“Yaaaay!” Harry clapped and hopped off Santa’s lap, running to Remus. “I get a boom!”

“That’s wonderful, Honey Bunny!” Remus picked him up and put him back on Santa’s lap. “Picture time!”

“No picture!” Harry pouted and crossed his arms.

“Please, Harry, it would make me so happy.”

“No!” Harry repeated, now shouting.

Remus realized, very suddenly, that Harry was long overdue for his nap time and probably overtired, overstimulated, and cranky.

“C’mon Har’ Bear,” Sirius coaxed. He stood by the armrest and rubbed a soothing hand over the toddler’s back “One picture, and then we get to ride the motorbike home!”

“We fy?” Harry checked.

“ _Zoom_ ,” Sirius promised, stepping away.

“You stay!” Harry demanded, grabbing the hand back.

Sirius glanced at the camera on the tripod, then shrugged and agreed. “Remus, get in here too.”

Remus ran up to the other armrest and smiled winningly for the camera.

The photographer elf peered into the viewfinder of the camera, then pulled back. “Can we take the sunnies off?”

Sirius made to slide the glasses off Harry’s face, but the boy clutched them tight to his face. “No,” Harry whined, in the tone that usually preceded full-blown cries.

“The glasses are fine!” Remus called.

“Here!” Sirius grabbed two adult-sized, identical pairs from the pocket of his leather jacket, handing one off to Remus. “We’ll match!”

Blessedly, the camera flashed and the photo was taken with no further delay.

Unfortunately, it seemed the sunglasses were more decorative than actually helpful in shielding little eyes from bright lights, and the flash startled Harry so much he immediately started sobbing.

“Oh, honey.” Remus scooped him up and held him close, bouncing him lightly. “It’s all right, we’re done now, we can go home.”

Sirius took the photo, encased in a laminated cardboard frame, and slid it into his inside pocket. “Let’s go,” he ordered, grabbing the pram and deliberately ramming it into the ankles of anyone who stood in their way.

❅~❅~❅

“Finally,” Sirius let out a sigh of relief when, after a long trek out the shopping centre and even longer flight, Harry had cried himself out and settled down for a nap against Moony’s chest. He slumped down on the sofa next to the pair and kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. “Was it worth it?”

“He had a good time until the photo,” Remus defended himself, quietly.

“Let’s see this ever-so-important photo, then,” Sirius decided, pulling it out from his pocket and opening the front flap. “Damn.”

“That bad?”

Sirius shifted over to hold the photo in front of Remus for him to take a look.

“Oh,” Remus whispered, looking at the photo of Harry in his aviators with his arms crossed and slightly pouting, looking like a little badarse in complete contrast to the usual jovial St. Nick, and framed on either side by his guardians in matching glasses staring down at him. “Well, that’s the cutest shit I’ve seen in my life.”

“I know,” Sirius whispered back, defeated. “We’re going to have to make this our Christmas card now, you know.”

“We’re going to have to frame it and put it on the wall.”

“A good wall too, this deserves prime real estate.”

“I decided what I want for Christmas, by the way.”

“Oh?” Sirius glanced up at him. “You’re usually impossible to shop for.”

“Because I have everything I want,” Remus reminded him with a smile. “Santa helped me figure it out.”

“Great chap, that Santa.”

“Aye,” Remus agreed. “He said he took Mrs. Claus to the South Pole for her birthday.”

“You want a vacation to the South Pole? Bit short notice, babe.”

“Maybe not the South Pole, and certainly not _this_ Christmas. But I’d like for us to go on a trip together, somewhere we’ve never been. We used to be adventurous, y’know.”

“I have some faint memory.”

“Would’ve been excited to try something as novel as a Santa’s Grotto with weird Muggle elves.”

“All right, all right” Sirius grumbled. He leaned over to kiss Remus slowly. “Wherever you want to go, my love.”

**Author's Note:**

> Rebloggable on [Tumblr](https://goodboylupin.tumblr.com/post/637791235513466881/picture-perfect-christmas)


End file.
